‘L’ of a plot twist!
Less than a month after deeming the 15-month total shutdown of the L-train tunnel linking Manhattan and Brooklyn “vital,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday backpedaled at the 11th hour and announced a piecemeal approach that will allow the line to still run 24/7.
Rather than the long-anticipated complete year-plus closure of the tunnel — which was expected to plunge cross-borough commutes into chaos starting April 27 — Cuomo backed a longer-term overhaul that would close one of the tunnel’s two tubes at a time on nights and weekends, leaving the line fully operational during weekdays.
“The simple fact is you have roughly 250,000 people who are going to need another way to work,” Cuomo said at a Thursday press briefing. “Fifteen months sounds like a relatively short period of time, but it’s not if you’re doing it one day at a time trying to get to work.”
A small circle of city and state officials was summoned Wednesday by the governor’s office to a highly-secretive meeting detailing the sudden change, multiple sources familiar with the situation told The Post ahead of Cuomo’s briefing.
The about-face came after Cuomo personally toured the tunnel — badly damaged by the salty deluge of Superstorm Sandy — in December and conceded that there was likely no alternative to the 15-month shutdown, expected to torpedo more than 225,000 daily commutes.
“I’m not holding out hope” for an alternative to the shutdown, Cuomo said at the time. “New Yorkers are willing to bear the expense and the burden of change, and they get that sometimes big projects are required, but to make sure that it’s really done right and it really has to be done.”
That announcement seemingly confirmed what the MTA knew — and commuters had been bracing for — for years.
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